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Obamacare Navigator Manual Shows Path To Identity Theft

As part of the complex montrosity known as Obamacare, people signing up for health insurance can have the help of Navigators - people with little training or experience wading through the most complex law ever passed. The manual for the program describes a system that will lead to privacy violations, personal embarrassment, and identity theft.

I read the Navigator manual in the mindset of information security: the set of practices and principles used to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and accessiblity of information systems.

Along the way, I kept thinking; why do we need a program so complex that we then need "Navigators" to help us wade through it?

Descriptions of practices that violate information security principles are rampant throughout the Navigator manual (pdf), but the portion on data safeguards has me crying into my coffee.

There are some generally accepted principles and guidelines for information security to keep in mind:

If you want to keep a secret, don't tell anyone. More generally, information should be limited to those who need access to it.

Most compromises occur by people talking to people, not from hacking.

Most compromises are committed by insiders.

The system should not rely on individuals to secure data, but should force them to take purposeful actions if they want to compromise it.

In general, what has my tears spoiling my daily cup is that they're relying on the personal integrity of people who will have more incentive to steal information than to safeguard it. Here, for instance, is the portion dealing with IRS information. That's right, the Navigators, who will be part time, seasonal employees, will go over your tax return with you, and keep a copy for their records:

Once you have the tax return information, you have to protect it. The IRS Data Safeguards protect information through:

Restricting Access. Only authorized people who need to know should have access to the information.

Recordkeeping. Keep excellent records on the information (e.g., sources of income and expenses).

Employee Awareness. Train employees how to safeguard information.

Reporting Requirements. Be ready to provide reports on how you protected the information if HHS or the IRS asks for reports.

Disposal. Know how to get rid of the information safely.

Need and Use. Only handle the information you need to use.

Computer Security. Make sure the information on your computer is as safe as the paper

That last point: If Navigators will have confidential data about you saved on their computers, especially their own personally owned ones, that's a basic design flaw. Even if the Navigators were individuals of perfect integrity, we know as a matter of metaphysical certitude that they will be targeted. It will be impossible to tell the identity thieves among them from the merely careless. Consider an identity theft ring that wanted access to people's tax returns. They can either compromise a Navigator's computer, or simply compromise the Navigator by buying their computer from them at the end of open enrollment.

Though the instructions repeatedly call on Navigators (and apparently, their employees) to safeguard information, it only highlights the fact that there is nothing forcing them to keep it safe other than their own questionable desire to do so.

System designers can't rely solely on personal integrity. They have to rely on systemic design (like ensuring that consumer data is not stored on Navigator computers, or only fleetingly so) and personal incentives, like the opportunity for advancement. Since the Navigator function will be seasonal, there will be no path forward from that job, and no accountability for data confidentiality.

In effect, each of the points above represents a way for data to escape -- or to be taken -- for nefarious purposes. The system appears to have been slapped together to give the Navigators jobs and make sure personal data was as accessible as possible to the overreaching federal hive, rather than to have been designed from the bottom up for data confidentiality (let alone data integrity).

Another interview has surfaced in which Jonathan Gruber, the MIT economist whose bragged about being involved in writing ObamaCare, suggested that subsidies will not be available to consumers in states that don't set up health insurance exchanges under the so-called "Affordable Care Act."

Since the passage of ObamaCare in 2010, critics of the law have endured the criticism that we’re all about opposition, without providing constructive alternatives for health care reform. The truth is closer to the polar opposite – if anything, we suffer from a surplus, rather than a deficit, of comprehensive plans to repeal and replace ObamaCare.

Americans already spend some 6 billion hours and $168 billion each year complying with a complex and onerous tax code. But ObamaCare is going to make tax filing even more of a chore for consumers who received subsidies for health plans purchased through the state and federal exchanges.

Cornell University has announced a $350 fee for students who don't enroll in the Ivy League school's Student Health Insurance Plan (SHIP), and students are pushing back against the administration, going as far as storming into the office of the school's president, David Skorton.

As the second ObamaCare open enrollment period came to a close over the weekend, more Americans learned that they owe Uncle Sam money because they received subsidies that were too great, in many cases because they had underestimated their income levels for 2014 when they applied for coverage through the health insurance exchanges.

With solid control of both the House and the Senate, one of the clearest mandates delivered to the Republicans in Congress was to repeal the onerous takeover of health care known as ObamaCare. This year, the new Congress has the greatest opportunity yet to fulfill that mandate – by using the budget process known as reconciliation. As millions of Americans are forced to pay a fine for not buying health insurance, and with millions more still struggling with high premiums and deductibles, there is no reason why Republicans should not use a tactic that can place a full repeal of the so-called “Affordable Care Act” upon the president’s desk.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments for the King v. Burwell case starting March 4th, with a decision likely to come down sometime in June. The Court’s decision will determine whether the IRS’ illegal implementation of ObamaCare subsidies to states that refused to set up insurance exchanges can continue. If not, the true cost of ObamaCare will be revealed to the American public, a cost that has until now been partially concealed by the IRS’ decision to circumvent the written law.

While the federal government often entices states to promote its agenda by promising “free” federal money for the states that adopt their programs, this money is never free, and always comes with strings attached. When the federal government offers “free” money for a program it is really just hoping to get the states hooked on the program before the giveaways disappear, much like a drug dealer who offers you the first hit for free.